Household appliances and industrial appliances, such as refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, heating systems and so on, are provided, for reasons of cost, with simple control elements, such as rotary switches or pushbuttons, and simple displays, such as light emitting diodes, luminous symbols, digits, liquid crystal display elements, which are normally adequate for normal use of the household appliances and industrial appliances.
These control elements, which represent a simple user interface, are not designed for the scenarios and situations below, however.    a) Fault states:            If a fault arises in the household appliance, only inadequate information can be displayed to a user of the household appliance or industrial appliance, for example by displaying a prescribed symbol sequence, for example in the case of a washing machine “Err27” on a liquid crystal display, if there is one, or by using a flashing warning lamp.        In both cases, the type of fault and a correct reaction to the occurrence of the fault which a user might take can be communicated to the user only very rudimentarily and inadequately.            b) Basic configurations:            Individual user-definable changeover of factory states on the household appliances or on the industrial appliances is often not possible at all or is possible only in a very complex and hence user-unfriendly fashion, for example by simultaneously pressing a plurality of pushbuttons or particular key combinations or by pressing prescribed key sequences.        In this complex manner, it is possible, for example on known appliances, to set a time of day, the type of beeping noises when a prescribed task has ended, for example when a wash program has ended on a washing machine, or the volume of signals output by the household appliance or by the industrial appliance, etc.            c) Data querying:            There is normally no provision at all for querying system states for the household appliance or for the industrial appliance. For example, a user of a washing machine has to date not normally been able to query the degree of filter soiling, the degree of calcification or a flow rate for water in the washing machine.        Besides such maintenance queries, there are also often regular useful-data queries, such as a query regarding the consumption of water, power, heating power, which, on the basis of the prior art, normally needs to be done manually by a service engineer.        
One possible solution to this problem is to fit or provide large-format data display units and keyboards or touch sensitive screens (touch screens) in the household appliance or in the industrial appliance. This solution is normally too costly, however, which means that often only the control elements described above are provided for normal operation of the household appliance or industrial appliance.
The resultant drawbacks for the user of such an appliance are particularly as follows:    a) Lack of state querying options:            Since it is not possible to query a state for the household appliance or for the industrial appliance, it is not possible to identify impending system failures or maintenance cases for the household appliance or industrial appliance early, which results later, when the appliance actually fails, in an increased time involvement, financial involvement and possibly increased material involvement for rectifying the damage.        Particularly in the industrial environment, the time involvement on account of failure of an industrial appliance may be particularly critical.            b) Inadequate fault displays:            Since the fault displays in the household appliance or in the industrial appliance can often be comprehended by a user only after studying the associated appliance manual or not at all, costly and time-consuming employment of service personnel occurs more frequently than would actually be necessary.            c) Complicated and missing configuration changes:            The complicated procedure for changing a setting on the household appliance or on the industrial appliance restricts user convenience to a considerable degree, and hence the sales value of the household appliance or industrial appliance is reduced considerably.        
When complex and hence expensive user interfaces are fitted, such as a large-area screen, a large keyboard, a trackball, touch sensitive surfaces etc., the following drawbacks result, in particular:    a) High production costs arise, which increase the price of the household appliance or of the industrial appliance disproportionately as compared with competitors' products.    b) In most instances of application, the user requires only the simple control elements described above, such as pushbuttons or rotary switches, which means that the user interfaces may even be found to be irritating to the user for the critical cases of maintenance or monitoring of the appliances. In the case of a video recorder or a remote control, for example, it is thus normal for rarely needed functions to be hidden in a complex fashion beneath additional panels or by rearranging the design of the appliances.
Particularly in the case of remotely controllable household appliances and industrial appliances, prior art requires that the control apparatus and the household appliance or industrial appliance to be controlled be specifically tuned to one another. In particular, it is necessary to ensure appropriate application control software on the control apparatus and the capability of communication between the control apparatus and the household appliance or the industrial appliance.
One frequently occurring problem in this regard is the compatibility between the external control apparatus, on the one hand, and the household appliance or industrial appliance, on the other.
The physical layer based on an inherently known communication layer model, particularly the OSI communication layer model (Open Systems Interconnection communication layer model), which is the basis for the wireless communication to take place between the control apparatus and the household appliance or industrial appliance, has standard communication protocols defined and in use for it, such as Bluetooth, IEEE802.11x, RKE, etc.
Within the communication layer model at the level of the application layer, i.e. an application which is to be controlled, the prior art normally presupposes that both appliances, i.e. the external control apparatus and the household appliance or industrial appliance, have specific, mutually tuned communication software and control software for the respective communication partner.
This presupposes that the external control apparatus, on the one hand, and the household appliance or industrial appliance, on the other, are tuned to one another in detail before they are started up.
This requires a high level of complexity and results in a low level of flexibility for the household appliance or industrial appliance. In order to be able to control an application associated with the household appliance or industrial appliance by using the external control apparatus, the prior art frequently requires the associated household appliance control program or industrial appliance control program to be stored in a memory device in the external control apparatus prior to initial startup, in order to be able to execute the household appliance control program or industrial appliance control program within the external control apparatus when the application is being executed as required and in order to able to transmit appropriate control signals to the household appliance or to the industrial appliance in order to control the application.
For this reason, there is a high memory requirement in the external control apparatus, and controlling a multiplicity of different applications as required may involve the external control apparatus reaching its capacity limits.
In addition, before a household appliance or industrial appliance is controlled for the first time, the associated application in the household appliance or in the industrial appliance and the external control apparatus, preferably a remote control, need to be tuned to one another in order to provide the requirements for later control of an application in the household appliance or in the industrial appliance. This is complex and difficult and frequently needs to be performed by an expert with technical training.